Toni Rumbau has created a new solo show for hand and shadow puppets for
audiences of all ages.

Following in the wake of
his latest work – from his now classic “Two Hands”, through “Double and
Shadow” and the opera “Euridice and the Puppets of Chairon” -, in this
new show the author-puppeteer brings together traditional, popular
puppet theatre and an extremely visual language of shadows, hands and
objects.

The central, archetypical
themes of puppet tradition (birth, death, creation, hunger, the duality
of good and evil, freedom…) are treated with the unleashed vitality of
the hand puppet and from the poetic and deeply symbolic perspective of
the shadow theatre.

A show which invites
children’s ingenuous and lively participation, and awakens the attention
and complicity of adults. For children aged 5 to 99!

The puppets:
Polichinela, the Dog, the Policeman, the Devil, Death… Traditional
characters, given life in today’s world by the imagination of the
audience and the skill of the puppeteer.

From the Egg to the
Cube: the Egg of Imagination, delivered to the puppeteer by the audience
at the start of the show, brings life to the cube, the box which is home
to the spirit of Polichinela. Here, the different characters are born.
At the same time a light emerges inside the puppet theatre, which is
thus converted into a sound and light box.

Shadows, puppets,
images, sounds, a speeding rhythm of puppet manipulation, subtlety,
tradition and modernity… A show created out of research and virtuosity,
in which the puppeteer postulates the traditional practice of puppets as
a trampoline for the search for new expressivity of sound and image.

With the use of the
swazzle (for some of the voices) and, furthermore, live music made by
strong but simple instruments, the puppets engendered in the depths of
the mysterious puppet theatre come to life to represent the eternal rite
of creativity and the struggle against death.

The puppet theatre, an
elongated, translucent cube, is lit from inside so as to become a light
and sound box filled with mysterious music. A box in which the
indomitable and fecund breath of Polichinela hides and throbs with life
and images.

«Full Hands»:
by means of those impressive tools, the puppeteer’s hands, tradition is put to
the test and re-founded in a process of introspection which turns the
puppeteer’s trade inside out. That which is traditionally hidden is illuminated
by consciousness, embodied in a restless point of light;
consciousness which is, at the same time, that of the puppet theatre and of the
puppets which inhabit it.

The audience’s perception
is thus amplified by a number of different points of view which are
superimposed one upon the other. At the end, once the puppets have
returned to the box from which they emerged, images from the Tradition
which underlies a show like this are displayed in the puppet theatre.
And the box of puppets, suddenly illuminated from within, becomes a new
theatre - a theatre in miniature, intimate: a theatre in which the
audience can imagine their own stories unfolding.